3D Realms is shutting down according to a report on
Shacknews that's
confirmed by a post on the
3D
Realms Forums by Joe Siegler, who says: "It's not a marketing thing. It's
true. I have nothing further to say at this time." 3D Realms has been otherwise
silent on this topic so far, but publisher Deep Silver and newly formed Apogee
are unaffected by the news, as they say: "Deep Silver and Apogee Software are
not affected by the situation at 3D Realms. Development on the Duke Nukem
Trilogy is continuing as planned." According to Shack the closure is due to
funding issues, and they have a statement from Take Two who claim to still own
publishing rights to Duke Nukem Forever, but that they
have not been funding development of 3D Realms' flagship game.

Actually dsmart, given that the company is closing due to lack of funding, I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to think that Take-Two will be the primary party interested in purchasing the IP. They spent 20mil funding development for a large part of that time and retain publishing rights.

You claimed they owned the IP, that's different than being first in line to buy it. They also never put any money into development of DNF. George Broussard has more than once relished in the fact that 3DRealms was self-funding development of the game, clearly a strategy that doesn't work in this economy when you don't have other products bringing in cash. If Take-Two had put money into the project, they would have been able to force it to release and would have done so long ago. They also wouldn't have to buy the IP as the debt would have guaranteed its transfer to them upon 3DRealms' closure. I'd love to see a link to a story that said they were shopping it around to another publisher because no story I've read about this mentions that.

This is truly a shame as while DNF was deservedly the butt of many jokes, this is a developer with a long and memorable history. Nice to see so many people laughing about a bunch of likely hard working developers losing their jobs because a game didn't come out that didn't affect your lives in any way and which nobody here would have played anyway (those that didn't steal it anyway.) I wonder how these people would feel if they lost their job and a bunch of people laughed at them and said they deserved it just because they worked somewhere that hadn't released a product in a while but told them their job was secure.